Reuters: Health:- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama planned a Capitol Hill visit on Saturday to rally support on healthcare as Democrats in the House of Representatives tried to nail down the last votes to pass his sweeping overhaul.

Reuters: Health:- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A 5.6-magnitude earthquake struck near Guantanamo, Cuba, on Saturday, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

Reuters: Health:- TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has suggested holding a referendum to approve subsidy cuts that the Islamic Republic's parliament has repeatedly blocked, a news agency said Saturday.

Reuters: Health:- RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Israel and the Palestinians on Saturday to restart negotiations as one Palestinian was killed during clashes in the West Bank.

Reuters: Health:- VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict apologized on Saturday to victims of child sex abuse by clergy in Ireland and ordered an official inquiry there to try to stem a scandal gripping the Catholic Church which has swept across Europe.

Reuters: Health:- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Secularist Iyad Allawi edged ahead of Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Saturday in a neck-and-neck election race that has laid bare the ethnic and sectarian divisions threatening Iraq's fragile stability.

Reuters: Health:- NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - A Palestinian youth was killed by Israel troops and another was seriously wounded on Saturday during a clash in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian hospital officials said.

Reuters: Health:- NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian investigators will get access to the Chicago man who pleaded guilty to helping plan the 2008 Mumbai attacks, but he will not be extradited to India on current charges, a U.S. official said on Saturday.

Reuters: Health:- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama renewed his administration's offer of dialogue and diplomacy with Tehran on Saturday, a year after his offer of a new beginning with Iran failed to achieve concrete results.

Health News from Medical News Today:- MedSolutions, a leading provider of medical cost management services, announced the launch of its oncology management program, which uses evidence-based guidelines to ensure appropriate use of diagnostic imaging, radiation therapy and drugs for cancer patients. "There is a vast and expanding body of research on cancer care, and doctors are understandably challenged to keep up with innovations in technology and best practices in treatment," said Gregg Allen, M.D., MedSolutions' chief medical officer. "This is further complicated by the number of new cancer cases in the U.S...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Physicians Practice and All Children's Hospital have joined forces to help provide area physicians and their staff more time to devote to patient care. This new partnership is a unique program designed to help doctors in the St. Petersburg area better handle the cumbersome and time-consuming issues of managing a busy practice. Through this new alliance, All Children's Hospital will use Physicians Practice's extensive resources to deliver essential practice management tools to help local physicians manage the business aspects of medicine more efficiently and effectively...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Westside Medical Associates of Los Angeles and Westside Medical Imaging (WMI) of Beverly Hills announce the benefit of early positron emission tomography (PET) scanning to identify Alzheimer's in its early more treatable phase. According to Dr...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Prometheus Laboratories Inc., a specialty pharmaceutical and diagnostic company, announced the execution of a research collaboration and license agreement with Bayer Schering Pharma AG, Germany, a worldwide leading specialty pharmaceutical company. The collaboration partners Prometheus' proprietary oncology diagnostic platform with Bayer's broad oncology pipeline in an effort to stratify patients to appropriate drug candidates and potentially accelerate the development of novel oncology therapeutic products...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Niacin, or nicotinic acid, when used under the care and monitoring of a healthcare provider, is the most effective agent available for increasing high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or "good cholesterol (1)." HDL is known as "good cholesterol" because it has protective effects on the heart and blood vessels. It not only removes excess cholesterol in the blood and brings it to the liver for disposal, it may also have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-clotting effects (2). Some experts also believe that HDL removes excess cholesterol from arterial plaque, slowing its buildup (3)...

Health News from Medical News Today:- BD Diagnostics, a segment of BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company), announced the launch of the BD Protect™ Infection Surveillance and Data Management System, a portfolio of healthcare management software solutions that tracks infections and helps prevent their transmission at three levels -- from patient to patient, between patients and healthcare workers, and from community sources to healthcare settings...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Atritech, Inc., an emerging medical device company, announced that it has obtained clarity from the U.S. Food and Drug Agency (FDA) on the regulatory path towards full approval of its WATCHMAN® Left Atrial Appendage (LAA) Closure Technology in the United States. In a recent letter received from the FDA, the agency requested that a confirmatory study be conducted to further substantiate the safety and effectiveness of the WATCHMAN® LAA Closure Technology in patients with atrial fibrillation at risk of stroke and eligible for anticoagulation therapy...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Moffitt Cancer Center and Proteacel LLC have announced that they have entered a licensing agreement under which Proteacel has acquired the exclusive rights to the PORE™ technology for delivery of genes into cells. Genes are the instructions that build cells. Defects in these genes cause disease, such as cancer. In order to understand how these genes work and their involvement in a disease process, researchers must study and modify them. The most common way to study gene function is to transfer the gene into cells...

Health News from Medical News Today:- ViroPharma Incorporated (Nasdaq: VPHM) announced the presentation of two abstracts relating to Cinryze™ (C1 esterase inhibitor [human]) therapy at the First International Congress of the Southern European Allergy Society in Florence, Italy. Cinryze was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in October 2008 for routine prophylaxis against hereditary angioedema (HAE) attacks in adults and adolescents. Cinryze is not approved in the European Union or any of its member states...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Stemedica Cell Technologies, Inc. (Stemedica), a world leader in stem cell research and manufacturing, announced that it has filed an Investigative New Drug (IND) application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a clinical trial. The trial will assess the safety, tolerability and efficacy of Stemedica's high potency proprietary allogeneic mesenchymal bone marrow-derived stem cells (adult human) as a treatment for ischemic stroke...

Health News from Medical News Today:- ViroPharma Incorporated (Nasdaq: VPHM) announced the launch of 'Ryze Above', an exclusive patient resources program within the company's patient support program, CINRYZESolutions®. The Ryze Above program was created for HAE patients prescribed Cinryze, the first and only drug specifically approved to help prevent swelling and/or painful attacks in teenagers and adults with HAE...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Individuals between 30 and 80 years of age, who have had a transient ischemic attack (TIA) or non-severe stroke within the past 30 days, and who cannot be treated surgically, may be eligible to participate in a Phase III clinical trial of a minimally invasive stenting procedure at the Cedars-Sinai Neurovascular Center. The study will focus specifically on patients who have had an intracranial artery narrowed by at least 70 percent and who are experiencing recurrent strokes or TIAs despite being on anti-clotting medication...

Health News from Medical News Today:- People with chronic illness often struggle to manage several prescribed drugs at a time. It's overwhelming when the vials, bottles and inhalers bulge from your medicine cabinet and you're confused about which drug is which, or when to take what. More medications seem to come with the territory as people get older. "Prescription drug use is heavily concentrated in people over 55 to 65," says Steven Findlay, senior health policy analyst at Consumers Union...

Health News from Medical News Today:- The hospital costs for treating septicemia increased by an average of nearly 12 percent each year from 1997 to 2007, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Treating this potentially deadly blood infection increased from $4.1 billion in 1997 to $12.3 billion in 2007. After adjusting for inflation, the federal agency also found other conditions that saw high annual increases in hospital costs in each of the 11 years between 1997 and 2007: -- Osteoarthritis, up 9.5 percent each year ($4.8 billion to $11...

Health News from Medical News Today:- No matter what Washington does on health reform, there's a lot you can do to reform your own health -- and two of the best places to start are your kidneys. So says Dr. Ronald Weiss, chairman of Results for Life, an educational campaign of the American Clinical Laboratory Association. "March is more than just basketball and the start of spring. It is also National Kidney Month...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Officials announced that Baylor Research Institute (BRI), part of the Baylor Health Care System, was recently re-accredited by the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AAHRPP). The re-accreditation certifies that BRI maintains efficient systems for monitoring research participant safety and embraces ethical standards higher than required by law in order to protect human participants participating in BRI research programs. Only 200 out of the thousands of human research protection programs in the U.S...

Health News from Medical News Today:- One of the nation's foremost vascular biologists, Dr. Timothy T. Hla, has been appointed as the new director of the Center for Vascular Biology and professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. Founded in 1995, Weill Cornell's Center for Vascular Biology is dedicated to biomedical research into vascular disease -- specifically atherosclerosis and thrombosis -- and the contributing role of the vascular system in a wide range of diseases. Previously leading the Center was its founding director, Dr. David P...

Health News from Medical News Today:- A fascinating event looking at sign language research is to be held at University College London on 20 March as part of the Economic and Social Research Council's (ESRC) Festival of Social Science (21-21 March). The vast majority of research studies on language and thought are based on languages which are spoken and heard, so this event will provide an innovative and fresh approach. The DCAL open day will include lectures, hands on activities and sign language poetry and film performances. It has been organised by the Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL)...

Health News from Medical News Today:- March of Dimes was honored March 16, 2010, at the 14th Annual Research!America Advocacy Awards event at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, DC. Jennifer L. Howse, PhD, March of Dimes president, and Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, granddaughter of March of Dimes founder President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, accepted the award. Established by President Roosevelt in 1938 to conquer polio, for more than 72 years March of Dimes has been a leader in improving the health of women and children...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Both legitimate brewers and distillers and authorities on the track of illicit alcohol from home stills will soon have a helping hand. Measurement experts have unveiled a portable device to determine the strength of alcoholic drinks quickly and easily, almost anywhere. Published in the open access Chemistry Central Journal, the researchers show that their technique is just as accurate, and more sophisticated, than widely used lab-based methods...

Health News from Medical News Today:- WPI's Center for Wireless Information Network Studies (CWINS) has received a three-year, $1.2 million award from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to conduct a groundbreaking study of the propagation of radio waves around and through the human body...

Health News from Medical News Today:- UroToday.com - Cystoscopy with hydrodistention is not practiced in any standardized fashion despite proposals by the National Institute of Diabetes Digestive and Kidney Disorders (NIDDK) 2 decades ago and more recently the European Society for the Study of Interstitial Cystitis (ESSIC) to establish such standards. Mahendru and Al-Taher from Colchester and Kings Lynn UK posted questionnaires to 486 Consultant gynecologists, and urologists in the UK to assess current practices...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Microorganisms are everywhere and most of them are harmless, but they can do a lot of damage in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals or in tissue transplants. With the aid of a new device, germs can be detected in artificial cartilage within a few hours. We are surrounded by microorganisms. They inhabit our skin, the air we breathe, the surfaces we touch. In most cases this is not a problem, but there are situations in which these constant companions can be dangerous or even life-threatening...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Adam Rose MD, MSc, FACP, an assistant professor of medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and a core investigator at the Center for Health Quality, Outcomes, and Economic Research at the Bedford VA Medical Center, has been named a 2009 Pier M. Mannucci Young Investigator prizewinner. Rose received this award for his article titled "Warfarin dose management affects INR Control" (Volume 7 Issue 1) which appeared in the Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis. The Mannucci Prizes are awarded in honor of Pier M...

Health News from Medical News Today:- A $10.2 million commitment from the Robertson Foundation to create a state-of-the-art Translational Cell Therapy Center (TCTC) will advance Duke Medicine's pioneering cell therapy research and treatment programs for children and adults with cancer, cerebral palsy, stroke and brain injuries suffered at birth. In making the announcement, Victor J...

Health News from Medical News Today:- More than one behavior can spread simultaneously across a social network. Recent studies have shown that behaviors such as happiness, obesity, smoking and altruism are "contagious" within adult social networks. In other words, your behavior not only influences your friends, but also their friends and so on. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego and Harvard University have taken this a step farther and found that the spread of one behavior in social networks in this case, poor sleep patterns influences the spread of another behavior, adolescent drug use...

Health News from Medical News Today:- A report published by the NHS Confederation's PCT Network says greater joint working across health and public services should be locally driven but needs stronger national support to bring about real change to patient care. The paper, 'Putting Our Heads Together: what makes senior joint posts work?' contains feedback from interviews with senior leaders whose posts cut across a number of health and local authority services. It outlines the strategic benefits joint posts can bring, especially given the financial challenges public services face in the years ahead...

Health News from Medical News Today:- EUREKA project E! 3424 RECAN has developed a range of unique and highly specific monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies - the proteins produced in the blood which counteract bacteria, viruses or cancerous cells. This was achieved by first producing a number of recombinant proteins which are important components of cellular signalling pathways. These proteins themselves have direct uses in immunisation and experimental studies...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Patients seen at private facilities reimbursed by Medicare were more than 550 percent more likely to have routine cataract surgery than those who received their care from the Department of Veterans Affairs, a strong indication that the frequency of cataract surgery may be responsive to financial incentives to either or both the medical facility and the physicians who perform the procedure. These findings from a large eight-year study are reported in the March 2010 issue of the American Journal of Medical Quality...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Emollients, also called moisturizers, reduce water loss from the outer layer of the skin (epidermis) by covering it with a protective film and keeping it supple and moist. They come in many forms: lotions, creams, ointments, soap substitutes and bath and shower additives. Regular use of emollients is the most important part of the day-to-day treatment for people with eczema. Emollients are used to correct dryness and scaling of the skin. They are a key component in the manufacture of lipstick, lotions, and other cosmetic products...

Health News from Medical News Today:- GenWay Biotech, Inc., the US-based diagnostic company that recently launched the You Test YouTM Cancer Assessment is expanding this cancer testing program internationally. An agreement has been executed to offer the You Test You*trade; Cancer Assessment in Greece starting in April. Additional agreements are in progress for other European nations as well. GenWay currently offers this test in the United States and Canada. Dr...

Health News from Medical News Today:- When you think of people suffering from social anxiety, you probably characterize them as shy, inhibitive and submissive. However, new research from psychologists Todd Kashdan and Patrick McKnight at George Mason University suggests that there is a subset of socially anxious people who act out in aggressive, risky ways - and that their behavior patterns are often misunderstood...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Downsizing and demotions at the workplace can be a health hazard for people over age 50, according to research reported in a recent issue of The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological and Social Sciences (Volume 65B, Number 1). A team of researchers found that job insecurity increased the chance of harmful effects for a sample of older workers in Cook County, IL. Over time, men reacted with greater physical symptoms, while changes in psychological health were more prominent in women...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Troubled children diagnosed with bipolar disorder may fare better with a different diagnosis, according to researchers at The Hastings Center. The researchers support an emerging approach, which gives many of those children a new diagnosis called Severe Mood Dysregulation (SMD) or Temper Dysregulation Disorder with Dysphoria (TDD). The findings come soon after proposed revisions to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) were opened to public comment...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Scientists at The Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center found that an emphasis on compliance with non-pathogen specific infection control practices such as hand hygiene, efforts to reduce device-related infections and chlorhexidine bathing (a daily bath with the same antibacterial agent used by surgeons to "scrub in" before an operation), is successful in reducing rates of healthcare-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. The findings were presented at the Fifth Decennial International Conference on Healthcare-Associated Infections...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Two new studies show an increase in polyp detection rates using the Third Eye Retroscope (TER), a retrograde viewing device, during colonoscopy. The first study found that TER added to standard colonoscopy detected 13.2 percent more polyps than colonoscopy alone, including 11 percent additional adenomas (precancerous polyps). A second study examined endoscopist experience using TER and its impact on polyp detection rates, concluding that polyp detection rates improved significantly with TER...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Previously unobservable events occurring between insemination and fertilization are the subject of a groundbreaking new article in Science magazine (March 18) by Mollie Manier, John Belote and Scott Pitnick, professors of biology in Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences. By genetically altering fruit flies so that the heads of their sperm were fluorescent green or red, Belote and his colleagues were able to observe in striking detail what happens to live sperm inside the female...

Health News from Medical News Today:- A team of researchers at MIT and the University of California at San Diego has shown how cell division in a type of bacteria known as cyanobacteria is controlled by the same kind of circadian rhythms that govern human sleep patterns. Previous studies have shown that even though cyanobacteria do not "sleep" in the same way that humans do, they cycle through active and resting periods on a 24-hour schedule. Cyanobacteria depend on sunlight for photosynthesis, so they are most active during the day...

Health News from Medical News Today:- With the help of a little singing bird, Penn State physicists are gaining insight into how the human brain functions, which may lead to a better understanding of complex vocal behavior, human speech production and ultimately, speech disorders and related diseases. Dezhe Jin, assistant professor of physics, is looking at how songbirds transmit impulses through nerve cells in the brain to produce a complex behavior, such as singing...

Health News from Medical News Today:- It is well known that the onset of puberty marks the end of the optimal period for learning language and certain spatial skills, such as computer/video game operation. Recent work published in the journal Science by Sheryl Smith, PhD, professor of physiology and pharmacology, and colleagues at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn shows that a novel brain receptor, alpha4-beta-delta, emerges at puberty in the hippocampus, part of the brain that controls learning and memory. Before puberty, expression of this receptor is low and learning is optimal...

Health News from Medical News Today:- Researchers have long been puzzled by large societies in which strangers routinely engage in voluntary acts of kindness, respect and mutual benefit even though there is often an individual cost involved. While evolutionary forces associated with kinship and reciprocity can explain such cooperative behavior among other primates, these forces do not easily explain similar behavior in large, unrelated groups, like those that most humans live in...